Tech Week: HP Touchpad and Nokia teams up with Microsoft

Yet another busy week in tech has past us by, here are our highlight from the past seven days, enjoy.

News of the Week

Nokia stole the headlines this week for both good and bad reasons. CEO Stephen Elop’s leaked memo revealed perhaps what many believed for some time, that the company was a ‘burning platform, .giving the strongest indication yet that the Finnish mobile manufacturer was set to call in some help.

Nokia and Microsoft officially teamed up on Friday with the Windows Phone 7 OS likely to feature on Nokia phones in the near future. But what does that mean for Nokia's recently launched MeeGo platform? Well it seems that the Nokia N9 could be ditched, despite comments Elop's memo that there was likely to only be one MeeGo device launching in 2011.

It wouldn’t be a week without a generous helping of Apple rumour-mongering, with some impressive claims grabbing the headlines this week. In order of feasibility, it seems an iOS 4.3 event is being scheduled for 14th February, which falls just as MWC 2011 kicks off.

Despite a slew of new tablets seemingly launching every week, none have so far been able to match the iPad. The latest to challenge Apple’s tablet stranglehold, is the HP Touchpad which was announced this week at the HP WebOS event. As well signalling the end of the Palm brand with the unveiling of the HP Pre 3 and HP Veer, the Touchpad which measures in at 9.7-inches just like the iPad comfortably stole the show. You can see our HP Touch Pad hands-on review here.

MWC 2011 is but a few days away and unsurprisingly the rumour mill has been in overdrive. HTC stole the show in Barcelona last year, and it seems we can expect much of the same with specs leaked for a HTC Desire 2, HTC Desire HD 2 and the HTC Wildfire 2. The sequel to the budget Android smartphone was spotted in a HTC promotional video earlier in the week, so it seems like we can expect at least a trio of handsets and perhaps a HTC Facebook phone to land at MWC 2011.

One phone we won’t have to wait for is the INQ Cloud Touch Facebook phone, which is not ‘the’ Facebook phone just to clear things up. The British based company revealed its Android 2.2 handset this week and also talked up an INQ Android tablet which could soon join the Cloud Touch in the future.

It is however not such good news for another British based venture as internet connected service YouView suffered delays once again pushing back a release date to 2012. Will YouView ever see the light of day? We are not so sure...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------App of the Week | TweekerLike social networking but hate it when people engage and talk back? This is the narcissism app for you...T3 App Chart | Top 10 BlackBerry Apps | Tweeker Review ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rumoured to be a notable feature in the iPhone 5, NFC (Near Field Communication) has been a term we seem to be hearing more about each week. But what would happen if we never used money again? See T3’s investigation into a cashless society.

iOS 4.3 is the next update that Apple fanbois can look forward to downloading to their iPod Touch, iPhones and iPads. But what exactly will iOS 4.3 serve up? We take a snapshot look at the key iOS 4.3 features.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------T3 Podcast - The web's biggest audio gadget show What next for Nokia? The T3 tech team discuss the weeks top news and their gadget of the week.T3 Podcast episode 169 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------